


He Was Wearing Blue

by 13letters



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe: World War II, Angst, Banter, F/M, Happy Ending, Historical, Morality, Nylons and Lipstick, Pacifism, Romance, Tea, Tolkien, WW2, happiness, hemingway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 19:04:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11469765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13letters/pseuds/13letters
Summary: "You're a card holding member of the War Resisters' International. Why didn't you tell me? Why'd you let me go on and on at you?""I like arguing with you," he admits, so low no other patron in this library has to quiet him. Like he's embarrassed, he curls his fingers through his shaggy hair and doesn't quite meet her eyes, but he suddenly seems so refined, so.. well. A dignified political idealist.The Henry Turner that speaks in front of crowds and evicts emotions in them, sees through entire rooms, travels Europe in the name of an end to unrest.





	He Was Wearing Blue

It's 1943 in a seaside town in South Carolina, and with gulls in the air and salt in the wind, the sky is almost permanently gray as if the rest of the world knows already -- has known since the nineteenth century -- that life is always on the brink of death, comes so close to beginning and ending again daily, is hurt and hope and loss and a hurricane.

 _All wars are the same war_ , but this is home more than Philadelphia ever was to her, more than London and Westchester and Greenwich, this quiet coast and the lazy sort of routine that isn't tedious when she _likes_ this day-to-day existence too perfect to put to words. She loves how the sky looks constantly like it'll open, how it makes the sea dwell alive. And maybe it's because it is hurricane season, because these years have felt like a winning and losing battle in WWII and the tolls it's reaved onto this great Nation, but praise, Reagan has yet to be elected. There isn't yet a Marilyn singing _happy birthday_ with the lustful croon of a baby grand teardrop piano, there's just what's left of Roosevelt, the day that will go on in infamy, a sense of nationalism that Hector says hasn't matched the uproar and the pride that was the global cause of twenty-odd years ago when he was just a sailor stuck in the top-bed of the bunks and biting bullets like glory -- NATO, the EU, the Iron Lady: these will all just be stepping stones like pebbles skipped into the bay, steps to heaven itself.

Death in the time of the Great War; it's always the women and children, isn't it?

 

This baby-booming generation will grow up and grow bitter, grow down in pessimism and stubbornness while old men will scowl at technology and get away with acting senile when their look of judgment can pass for curiosity. _I don't remember women having jobs when I was younger_ , they will complain, but who taught them? Who were their secretaries?

Nylons and red lipstick and heels that aren't made for comfort yet, pearls are meant to show class but God, what won't women do for birth control now? Make-up can get you what you want like a little Hollywood glamour, revered not quite _old_ yet (they haven't lived up to their legacy of bright names on billboards backdropping the stars they are that fall, too) but silk pillowcases are all the rave to keep curls smooth overnight, there's so many standards here --

Somedays Carina is angry all these things determine value (she's a busybody, she's a slut, she's a prude, she's lazy, she's a slob it seems depending on what it is she wears for practicality; she's a bitch when she says _no_ ), and in office after office, movement after movement, peace rallies and secret agencies and schoolyards and libraries, doors closed in her face as much as she stands firm and doesn't sway from piety, penance, and impartiality.

This land of opportunities is still mostly _not_.

 

She remembers hearing about just when Poland was invaded.

It was with her father that she was welcomed into marches and lectures, could swear the oaths of peace and renouncing a war if she cared enough to do so. 1938, and the world seemed darker after that to no prospects, no peace, her father's waking up to nightmares, her fighting the only way she knows she can.

 

She strolls down the boardwalk under a wide-brimmed hat, a loose blouse tucked up at the sleeves, sea air cleansing her soul like new beverages claim to in magazine ads. Apparently there's more than one way to save a life, and she feels the sand stick to her toes, she hears the happiness light-heartedly carrying voices on the wind.

She people-watches and she reads: Austen, war comics, news from the war that's no doubt been edited. She tries to read between the lines. She tries to imagine the woman the soldier in the picture might have left behind, this life they might have shared if peace had been more generous.

But she laughs, thinking how devout to the cause that nameless gal from the South must be, little Miss Mississippi who still probably views the War through Scarlett O'hara's biased, rose-colored lenses. Fiddle-dee-dee, but God bless technicolor motion pictures, right?

She gardens and she attends Sunday service with Hector the weeks he remembers she's so cynical towards Jesus, yet she hopes some of it will sink in his head like seastone and foam, if ever there was a soul worth saving, oh, goodness. It would be her papa.

She tries to laugh at his jokes while he cooks for them, tells her about flying planes and sailing ships and a woman that lived with her smile and all the good in her, a sore spot because she misses her mum in the quiet way she's learned men display their grief: nonchalance. The war took its tolls, but there's more than one way to rob a cradle. Barbossa tells her about the old friends of his, too, only one in particular above the rest. Last she saw Jack, though, he was losing at solitaire. And that isn't a war.

 

At the library, the owner thinks she's stuck-up because she isn't easy to impress, but another assistant, Dawn, she always smells like coffee and salt and roses.

They go to a diner one night they close later than usual and they become fast friends -- Dawn's a little quick, a little carefree, kisses men that reek of smoke with her mouth open and her lipstick still intact after. She tells her how she had a beau that got drafted and and it'd been months since the last letter he'd promised. So her promises, too, well. Grief is grief, isn't it? She's still young, she says like she's swallowing her guilt like iced tea. The ways women show their grief are desperate and often begging.

She calls Carina sweet when she helps her home, staggering drunk and slurring, but Carina isn't trying to be sweet, she's trying to be safe because she saw how a few of those men were eyeing Dawn from inside the restaurant they'd been in. With her friend's sparkling, almond eyes, her pretty face, her curves, they're more alike than one might think -- with Carina's scowl and top-button blouses, a lot of her worth to these men too is based on how much they want to fuck her.

 

She's waiting on a bench outside the school to speak with the teacher. Ms. Stein is expecting a baby, she says, and while that makes Carina pause, work with steady income in one hand, a family in the other, this really shouldn't be either _or_ , this shouldn't have to be a choice, Margaret doesn't want to give up teaching all these children just to raise one of her own instead of making this an ultimatum when women, powerful, capable, _infinite_ women, we can do both.

Margaret's just not the one that's forced it, and she's excited, she really is. Carina's going to love teaching, and the kids are going to love her.

They're waiting inside for a quick interview, though, so _come on_ , Margaret urges, "you're going to be brilliant. Here, wear my lucky pin."

 

She isn't sure who she should have warned of the other -- as unlikely as she might've ever imagined, Dawn and Scrum, but in her living room with the steering wheel on the wall, pictures on the mantle, the main window open with a towel on the floor since it's raining, everyone's shoes are off, muffins are baking in the oven.

"When do you think they'll marry?" Hector grimaces from beside her, watching the two sway to the music from the radio on the carpet.

"Three months," she teases monotonously, giving herself a moment or two to envision the white gown, pinned up, curled hair. A blue ribbon to keep true with the something borrowed -- a handkerchief, maybe -- and the look on the groom's face --

She nearly chokes when she realizes she'd been envisioning her own wedding instead of her dearest friend's, with lace and no bouquet, Hector scowling the entire walk down the aisle so he wouldn't cry. The soft sort of elegance and lavender everywhere. Being loved by somebody, maybe, that would be.. that would be nice.

Like he's reading her thoughts, the train of them seconds past into her daydream, he asks, "And you?" like he's long-suffering. Like he worries about this, leaving her unsupported in life. He just simpers with it and smiles and it's kind, and she laughs him off with a shake of her head, a wave of her hand as she sets down her tea.

"I'm too busy for that," she tells him, a half-truth that makes his eyes crinkle and has her snorting. More like she doesn't _want_ that, even if Dawn looks like she's falling in love with Scrum's tanned skin and easy smiles.

She and Dawn had been caught in the rain and half-running for home when they'd run into Scrum. In the slum of the streets, he had put down his coat over a mess of filth so they wouldn't ruin their shoes with mud, water be damned. Perhaps it was the chivalry or how he'd only showed them courtesy, but when Dawn looked up at him to say _thank you_ , love never really is what it seems. With her drenched blue coat and soaked, plastered hair sticking to her face, Scrum remembered how he always fancied the tale of mermaids and romance. They're living the rest of it out.

But then the oven smells like the muffins are ready, and as she's getting them out with checkered oven mitts, the lilt of the radio's music changes to beeping, to breaking news, to a list of dead.

 

Dancing one night, drafting a lesson plan the next, she does spend the better part of an afternoon at the beach when the sun graces this town with its shine. This is still a war, though, but days like these, it's easier to forget.

She notices -- how can she not -- a rowdy group of boys her age likely on break from their university. They're not too far from where she's sitting in the sand on a plaid blanket in her striped swimming costume, a volume of poetry in her lap. They're knocking a ball back and forth loudly, occasionally singing and shouting while a sullen young man seems to supervise them. He's the only one in a uniform, albeit dressed down with his hair tied back, his tanned arms exposed and already darkening under the sun.

When a young man _accidentally_ misjudges his throwing distance and overhandedly lands the pigskin inches away from her bare, red polished toes, she can't help but laugh at the man jogging towards her too smug to be entirely sheepish.

"I'm sorry!" he calls, loud then quieter when he's a foot away. Golden hair and a charming grin, she lowers her book from her face and sees straight through him.

"Of course you are," she chides him.

And the look on his face, he must be unaccustomed to having something to say beyond _hello_. His pretty face is nice, though, means well, but when his mouth opens, it's not him that speaks.

"You're keeping them waiting," the one in the uniform chastises him. He grins in good humor as the blond bows himself out, and he turns back to look at her, away from the sand his buddy kicks up. "I apologize for him," he sighs. He looks utterly exhausted. He looks like he's the type that cares about what she's got to say, however, won't just stare at her pale, English legs feet away from the surf.

"You really don't have to," she finds it in herself to say, almost soft.

The sun glints off the chain around his neck. He anxiously reaches up and aggravates his dark hair with his fingers. "I am anyways, miss."

"Pardon me," since she's just dying to know, she's mailed the leaflets and marched and sworn the words to herself again and again, _I renounce this war_ because she's figured it, it isn't helping any side, "are you in the service?"

She looks a little pointedly to his tags, and then oh, dear. His face transforms with his smile.

"Oh," he says. Like he's startled or almost guilty, but WWII won't be Vietnam. "No. The CCC, miss. Civilian Conservation Corps, we --"

"Yes," she gushes, "heavens, I know, I have so many questions. And grievances, mind you."

"G-- grievances?" That makes him stutter then laugh, but not meanly. Like a gentlemen, he takes a polite step back when she stands, takes her sand-strewn hand with his.

"Yes," she challenges with a gleam in her eye. "And complaints." This is like a window, a chance, but oh, those dark eyes when he takes his shades off, the things he must have seen.

The things he must have done.

"I'm James," he says like he means it, holding onto her eyes and just her eyes when she takes her sunglasses off, too. "James Norrington, the second."

"Goodness, no wonder you seem so solemn and pretentious," she murmurs, squinting her eyes up at him. "Is your father in the service, too?"

 

"Tell me again how you met," Dawn gushes, dreamily setting down her teacup with a wistful sigh.

"Tell me again how you've finished that last chapter of that Tolkien book," she counters. She's waiting to read about Bilbo Baggins, alright. Thorin's a fox.

She's rummaging around for an old dancing shoe buried _somewhere_ in her room -- the only neat surfaces are the vanity table, the pictures and the small memorials, the nail polish, really.

"I'd wear a lighter colored hose, if I were you. You ghastly pale thing, your face is so fair that sometimes I hate you," she dramatically says, sprawled out quite unladylike on the bed.

"If you were me," Carina says, standing and choosing to button or unbutton her sweater, "you wouldn't be wearing underthings under your hosiery."

"You think you'll kiss him?" Dawn asks idly. She looks down boredly at her nails, like she doesn't just live for gossip.

Carina nearly chokes. "James?"

"Yes, you goose. James with the serious eyes and that sweet way he talks. No wonder you like him. You know, you're going to have to tell me if you do."

"That would be uncouth," she teases, fluffing out her hair. "We'll dance and share pie, probably. How's that?" And the small victories might happen everyday, rescues and liberations and shipments of food and blankets. But going dancing on the East coast doesn't change the monstrosities occurring in Eastern Europe.

The whole thing, how much she cares or doesn't, it's getting confusing. Because they never talk about it, because sometimes heartache is so quiet, she asks it while she's meeting Dawn's eyes in the vanity's mirror. "Have you heard anything from him?"

"No, dear," she smiles, wicked and red and a mask. "I haven't heard from Tony in months. Now, do you want me to pin your hair? Do you want to borrow my lipstick?"

\--

"Oh, my -- _oh, my God_! Oh, my _God_!" She's gripping the steering wheel tight in her hands, her knuckles so white, everything dropped into silence here in her dad's old car. She checks herself fit injury quickly, nevermind it was just a small bump, she tries to convince herself, but oh, God. Oh, God.

She just hit something.

Not a -- not a car, but what if she just ran over a person? Dear goodness, she'll be a felon, her mama would be so disappointed; hell, her mum would be so proud from what her papa's told her, she -- she steels herself, because God _damnit_ , Hector always told her to raise her chin, to stand up taller, to meet fear dead-on and not show anything but courage. So she gets out of the car in a hurry, but as she comes around the hood, her heel nearly skids on the rain-wet pavement, and all her control is just. Just. Gone.

"Oh, my heavens," she whispers to herself, _I renounce all claims to war_. "Did I -- hello?" she calls. Sunset is dark tonight, but glancing back to the lights of the car still bright, her stomach lurches. "Oh, no!" she cries to the man huddled on the road, "oh, no! Did I hit you? I'm so sorry, I --"

"Why don't you watch where you're driving!" he shouts back, so dark and angry to her shipwrecked panic. She's running as fast she can in her confounded shoes thinking _don't be dead, don't be dead,_ he's not, he -- "I expect you'll pay for damages," the man threatens in flawless, accented English, and all wars are the same war.

She crashes down to her knees next to the fellow, trying to remember as much of the steps to aid in breathing to unconscious persons as she can, but he tenses and jerks away from her, and the man she hit. He isn't a man at all.

It's luggage: a lumpy, canvas bag, a worn, durable traveling case. "Oh," she says, despite herself nearly grinning. It's a crisis averted. "Thank goodness that's all it was. You're unharmed?"

Emotionlessly, he just _looks_ at her. "This is all I own in the world."

"Yes," she frowns, "pardon me, but then you might've had the sense to not drop your belongings when you were diving out of the way," she points out.

Grimacing in apology, she reaches out to at least sort through the broken from the salvageable. As quick as the lightning overhead, though, the man's hand shoots out to stop her. "Forgive me, doll," he sneers, manners just so _rude_ since he turns on her like a snake, "what the hell do you think you're doing? I'll thank you to not touch my property."

"I--" Inexplicably, a double standard, she'd rather men not censor their profanities on account of her gentile womanhood, but she is a lady. He shouldn't speak so! He -- he's an ass, is what he is. "I'm being gracious enough to help," she tells him slowly, her voice hard in the answer. "At least let me assist you in rescuing these pages."

"They're as good as ruined," he huffs, so condescending like he has the gall to belittle her like she's discredited him. He seems sheepish enough the next instant nonetheless. His sigh isn't quite apologetic, but when she blinks at him, it is like she can tell he's trying to reign himself in and think optimistically. Sensibly! "There isn't much of value, not really."

"Then I'm sorry. I could have run over your legs."

"If you were that sorry, you wouldn't have even swerved towards me," he says stoically, coming up to his feet. And she _knows_ that tone. He may as well say that women shouldn't be driving.

Jesus. Decidedly, she stands and crosses her arms, stomps the heel of her foot in an act so feminine she cringes at the delicacy; goodness, this night, she checked her mirror for her lipstick for a _second_. "I'm sorry," she repeats, earnest albeit annoyed. "Although you should not have been walking in the middle of the road."

"You weren't looking," he corrects, glancing up from her heels to her hosiery, along her blue polka-dot dress, up past the lace collar to her curled hair and her lipstick. He's quiet for a second before his mouth does this _thing_ , not a smile but not anything else, either. "That was a terrible apology, too."

"It's years of church lessons biting her tongue, manners keeping in her cheek, respect and penance forbidding her critical thoughts of not calling him an idiot. That's all the apology he'll receive from her. "I know a doctor surely still open. I can drive you there to check you're alright."

"You think I'm letting you take me anywhere?"

She can't help herself. "What other chance have you got," she spitfires back. He towers over her, then, dark and shadowed and domineering, and for just an instant, she almost fears. This war has seen neighbor against neighbor and the color _red_ everywhere. "I truly am sorry," she murmurs.

She really didn't see him anywhere, but now that she really can't see him since she isn't looking up at his face, she _can't_ , his clothes look -- damp. He smells like nature, and he has military tags around his neck. His jacket reminds her of James's and she -- she's just late. That's really all there is. She hopes her father isn't worrying about her even if she already knows it's the case.

"I'm sorry to say I don't believe you," he says stiffly.

Only, it makes her smile the tiniest bit. "I appreciate your apology."

He laughs quietly. It's all his neck and teeth, dark eyes glinting, just it doesn't sound mean. He sounds sad. All wars are the same war. "I'll be fine," he supposes. "Apology accepted, then."

"I'd still rather you visit the hospital. I can at least get you directions." No-nonsense. The urge to stomp her foot again or cross her arms is dwindled since he's still looking at her like that, as if he's a coin toss between angry or endeared, almost. Inexplicably, she feels her cheeks grow warmer for it, and really now, she's ready to be finished here. "If there's nothing more I can do --"

"You look like you have plans," he interrupts, uncharacteristically (from what she's seen) calm to her bristled and defensive. It makes her feel silly, her dancing shoes, her pinned hair, her red lipstick: self-conscious for _vanity, vanity, all is vanity_ , but. Snapping her gaze to his, the way he's gazing at her, it's silly. "I don't want to impose, miss," he says. "I can walk if you'd just point me in the right direction."

A trick of the light, she doesn't think he could be really blushing, but this is like a world of power in rosy cheeks, and she feels just a smidgen light-headed. "You wouldn't impose," she says hollowly. James would understand, and it isn't like they're an item. "It's the least I could do. 'Sides, you look like you've been walking a long ways."

"I'd likely look better if I wasn't just hit by your vehicle, doll."

"I -- oh," she rages, trying to think righteously. "I just.. grazed your baggage a little." Please, dear goodness.

"I've been walking from Maine," he says suddenly, quickly gathering up his bag, the case, the mess of papers. "Keys in the ignition?"

"Beg pardon?"

"You got the keys?" he repeats, looking at her like she's slightly dim.

She resists rolling her eyes. "Of course I do," she snaps. She isn't an idiot nor a reckless driver. Except he is a little too imposing, she thinks, if they're condescending faults, opening the back door to set his things in. He's still at the driver's side when she reaches it, chivalrous and gallant, "Thank you for getting the door for me," she smiles, nodding once before starting to get in like this is the turning point, the asteroid that hit the earth to creation's impact.

"Uh," he interrupts, "no."

"Excuse me?"

"Sorry," he says. Abruptly, without either of them realizing he had until he does, he releases his light hold on her arm and she could almost forget quit breathing. "I'm going to drive."

"Excuse me?" she repeats, snorting very much not like a lady. "You're not. This is my car."

"Yeah, but miss, you've proven yourself as an incapable driver, so." He sucks his teeth, gestures like what-can-you-do, this burden he has to bear.

Like hell.

"Get in the passenger's side," she orders him, squaring her chin, standing up straighter. She's practically daring him to refuse (he's making her unforgiving and willing to really hit him with her father's car), but cowed or awed, he listens, almost smiles she thinks, with his eyes so brown and wide.

They don't speak the entire ride to the hospital.

 

In just a short month, everyone speaks their fears aloud: bombs.

She marches and she mails leaflets, she buries herself in all of the CCC James shares with her. It's not much, but she joins a quilting circle the women in her prayer group have started since what else can a woman do to reproach the war? She sees Margaret glowing and rounder each day, a healthy reminder that happiness is still around and still looks so good.

She watches Dawn eat salads, listens to Hector's grumbling about how youth is wasted on the young, how Scrum's just gotta decide its high-tide, high-time he marries Dawn so he can have grandkids of a sort. Then he turns like a traitor onto her and asks after James, but she just laughs and tells him about a girl he met at a conference in Siberia with the PPU, how when she goes with him for pie at diners and dancing with some of his school friends, it's brotherly, always has been, and she listens to him prattle on about this girl with fire for hair and sapphires for eyes.

 

"You," she blurts, startled.

The man from that night blinks at her. He speaks around a mouthful of his sandwich, turkey on rye, looking so much better in daylight, oh, no, "What?"

"No," she frowns, just barely. Thinking better of just continuing her way out, she slides neatly into the booth opposite him, her skirt lifted carefully in her hands. It's strange for her to remember him, maybe, but her, he's seen her since even if a legacy isn't what she wants, if all she can do is to send money and quilts to the war front across the sea and overlook the harbor where soldiers are rowed bloodied back and forth to England. They're so far away, as prevalent as the war is here, all they know are blackout curtains. No smoke curling up from the ground. Dog tags still around his neck. "Your name," she tells him, asking.

A beat passes, and then this man _laughs_. His shaggy, sunkissed hair shaded in the diner light, his head rolling back, his shoulders broader than she'd remembered. "It's been weeks. Go away." He grins ruggedly, charmingly, and oh, she thinks. _Oh, no_.

"Your tags," she says defensively, unsure. "I saw them but couldn't make out the name. I asked the physician about you the next day, too, only he wouldn't disclose any -- oh." As he holds then up for her to read, she leans closer and squints her eyes. " _Joshamee Gibbs_ ," she reads, just a touch of embarrassed. "I'm Carina --"

"Turner," he interrupts again. He dabs at his mouth with the red checkered cloth, grinning behind it since he's too clever by half, and her, this pretty little British thing. God. "Henry Turner, miss."

"Barbossa," she introduces tentatively, extending her hand. He's callused fingers gentle against her smooth palm, brushing over her skin before he squeezes her hand. And she starts, like a.. like a spark, she realizes, frowning. Hope is displaced irony. "Turner. James has mentioned you."

It wasn't a question. While confused, he's flattered, too, and it's.. it's so easy to half-hold onto his hand, the warm stretch of his fingers a comfort that already feels familiar. "Can I -- can I buy you lunch?" he wonders. Hesitant, however doubtful and hopeful all at once, and she speaks without really thinking and rationalizing.

"I've got the next twenty minutes."

 

"I want to meet him," Dawn complains.

The skies are gray, the air is cooling, they're strolling out of the large library together when a tall head of black, unkempt hair cuts through the crowd so purposefully, long-legged with grace he hasn't flaunted when her cheekbones and her spite had him near tripping out of his seat.

"I've only met him twice," she confides in her friend, conspirational even as she's preparing herself for the third time as he starts towards her. In all honesty, she's not sure what he wants. "Henry," she greets when he's close enough, taking Dawn's arm for she sounds as if she'll relapse. "It's good to see you," she tells him, feeling like she could mean it.

" _Very_ nice to see you," Dawn preens.

Henry doesn't even glance at her, doesn't stray from Carina's eyes. She can already feel what that's doing to her head. "I forgot to ask," he says.

"It's been two weeks since we last spoke."

"I forgot to ask if I could take you out," he clarifies, bowing his head a bit. "I don't know how I'll ever see you again otherwise."

Because this is a war, after all. And he's never been particularly blunt, but two weeks ago she monotonously mentioned something Hemingway had written in her book, something about longing, and if -- if he's going to be dead in the coming years, anyways. He bends his knees just so, bringing them that much more eye level.

"You can!" shrieks Dawn, giddily turning Carina towards her and taking the books from her hands, pinching her cheeks. "Good Lord, you _can_ , Henry Turner, roughly age nineteen to twenty-four if she had to guess under oath," she recites, gushing.

And Henry pretends to laugh, his eyes go a little creased. "Under oath? Twenty-one," he states quietly, still watching her face. "I'll walk you home. If -- if you would like."

"That really isn't necessary." He doesn't quite have to know where she lives yet.

"Oh, go have fun," Dawn orders, setting both them out.

"Goodness, Dawn."

 

And they do.

"I'm sorry I was so rude to you that night," he tells her awkwardly, walking down a street close enough by her side that she's acutely aware of how effortless it'd be for him to take her arm with his, to link their fingers together if maybe they knew each other better, if she'd known he wasn't so lost in transit, here. If there wasn't this feeling of urgency in the air: something temporary.

"I could have killed you," she excuses, absently pulling at the sleeves of her sweater. "I think you're forgiven."

His eyes just burst and thaw, though, ice melted into water, and he looks too measured, too thoughtful when he gazes down to her. It's the first either of them really bend. "Tell me more about _A Farewell to Arms_."

That makes her pause, struck speechless here as birds fly overhead, the colors in the stoplights brightening from red to green.

It also has him pressing his palm against the small of her back, helping her forward and off the busy street since she lets him, since just as quickly, he pretends he hadn't just touched her, isn't tactile enough to let cohesion pull them yet.

"You remembered," she says, peering up at him. Then just as soft as her gasping that, porous light brushing their faces with salty air, "I -- I have to go, Henry."

 

She remembers the name around his neck like she remembers the battalion Dawn's beau Tony was stationed in, how Henry's chains are just a standard measure given for the MIA, the presumed dead, the terrors too frightening to name.

One night, he tells her how Gibbs placated him, told him that he was fighting this war so Henry wouldn't have to, so Elizabeth wouldn't have to, a protective father 'till the last since Weatherby had gone, since he remembered his mother as a little girl playing at swords and glorifying war.

( _"Elizabeth,"_ she wondered with just as much biting, subtle tact as the knife she keeps in her purse. _"Who's she? Your sweetheart?"_

She bets she is. This sweet, good-mannered thing with a strong vocabulary and soft eyes. She can't say why she's jealous of her, suddenly.

Even moreso when he laughs at her from over a vanilla milkshake, nudges her knee with his. _"Don't be jealous of her. She's my mum!"_ )

Because he tells her how one awful night, she hugged Gibbs because he was roughly her father's height, and far as she knew, since Will was still away to war, she was all alone. The family she finds and loses all over again -- she had lost her mother, too, he tells Carina.

It's with some trepidation that he admits how he kinda just hiked and bummed rides to get to James here, a boat ride away from the CCC in North Carolina because it'd break his parent's _heart_ if he enlisted.

He tells her next that he wants to, and then since she's waited all her cognitive thinking life for a moment such as this, she explains to him the concept of pacifism with her feet slipped out of her sensible, supportive clogs, her hair messily pulled into a knot.

"I just think violence solves what words can't," he tells her from across the table. He's cupping his chin in his hand, watching her in a bit of a daze devour her peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich. She's so peculiarly nationalistic.

"But that's exactly the kind of patriarchal thinking that has this vicious cycle continuing," she tells him, setting her teacup down onto its saucer with conviction, damnit, this man doesn't even know what pacifism is. He's going to be educated even if the school board doesn't think she's qualified, is concerned by her accent, so. "If fights and battles are wearing opposite sides to exhaustion so there's no choice but to force a compromise, why wouldn't a sane man rather not risk the lives of his soldiers and civilians? Perhaps if they'd talk through it, work through reasons and motives and their problems together to --"

"Why do you believe all this?" he wonders aloud. Quickly, he turns his eyes to the sidewalk ahead.

This is a conversation that's lasted a week, over lunches, inside her car, down the boardwalk with him telling her that her eyes are so stormy, that he can swim.

"My father," she tells him against the wind, closing her eyes. "He still lives with the First World War. It need not have happened." Even if he had managed to keep his leg, the gas from Ypres still makes his hands shake.

He sobers as quick as he smirks. "You think?" he asks solemnly, severe as the rain clouds look overhead.

"With contrition," she whispers testily from inside the library.

"Not conviction" he says, with his lack of disrespect to even lower his voice, with the shameful ignorance that didn't know what pacifism was. "James was right about you. But think of the terrible imbalance that'd result if peoples had no one to take arms up for their own liberation."

"Through riots and brutal police forces? Think of France."

"That in an effective, appropriate state, protect them," he frowns.

She remembers James telling her of Switzerland, though, how neutrality was written so plainly on the faces in that train with him. Gazes steadfast on floors, heads bowed low in this poster-child land of appeasement.

"Can't you see what violence does?" she implores him, tucking her hair behind her ear, feeling the heat in her cheeks. If eyes are windows, then hers need to evoke and evict all these thoughts society thinks she's too female to convey. But she's gotten so angry at him this past week, bothered by how he debates conflict as a necessity that shakes her a bit, disarms her like his smiles do. "It's nothing short of ruin."

He wants to ask, "What has violence taken from you?"

But instead, his face changes like he's finally understanding the gravity of her words. Then in a quake, he's lost it to casual, underhanded nonchalance. "I agree with you, Carina," he says, like he's looking down at her in the bright lights of Hector's car, contrite.

"You do?" she blinks, startling herself with how loud she's spoken in the quiet library, how amazed she sounds.

"Here," he states quietly, his mouth still. Rummaging through his wallet, he pulls out a card and shows her like Gibbs's dog tags.

"The WRI," she reads, "Henry Turner." Affronted, she smacks at his arm, her eyes just shining like his mirth so quiet, if she blinks, she'll miss his emotions entirely. "You're a card holding member of the War Resisters' International. Why didn't you tell me? Why'd you let me go on and on at you?"

"I like arguing with you," he admits, so low no other patron in this library has to quiet him. Like he's embarrassed, he curls his fingers through his shaggy hair and doesn't quite meet her eyes, but he suddenly seems so refined, so.. well. A dignified political idealist.

The Henry Turner that speaks in front of crowds and evicts emotions in them, sees through entire rooms, travels Europe in the name of an end to unrest.

"What else aren't you telling me?" she wonders lightly, for once not thinking anything else about the unrest in Quebec, the shackles of society that revel Hitler, how guarded she's supposed to be with him.

"I'm going back to Oggsford," he admits reluctantly.

And oh. Oh, this bastard. "You -- you told me that you couldn't read," she says, arching a brow at him.

All he does is grin so slight, it's just the faintest upturn of his lips. "I didn't say which language I couldn't read in."

"Henry."

"Carina," he sighs, like he's regretful.

"When might you go?"

"Doll," he calls her, so he can distract her pretty mouth into smiling instead of frowning, even if it's sad. "Not for a while."

 

Even on the sides of the Allies, she wonders if this invasion of Sicily is anything like Poland and the assassination that must have started this all.

 

"Do I ever get to meet this young man?" Hector wonders inconspicuously, looking at her over the top of his paper and the blaring headlines. He's waiting for the engagement notice even though he knows Scrum's gonna ask his girl to marry him -- they talked about it two weeks ago. Palo's just a coward, but according to Dawn, it's been the best couple months of her life.

"You've met Henry," she reminds him pointedly.

"Not with you there. And he went by a different name. I don't trust him. Spies are everywhere, they say."

"Would you hurry and read that so I might have a look?"

"When God decides to give me my leg back, I'll hurry."

None too pleased, she gives him a look. "This would involve your eyes. I think he's leaving soon, anyways," she frowns. And she's so silly; unbidden, her eyes start to burn for this man, but she won't let her tears wash the dishes in the sink. "Oxford is terribly close to London, isn't it?"

There was a professor also part of the WRI held in a British prison more than a few months ago. No word of his release.

"There isn't any harm in writing the poor boy," he tells her gently. The old wooden chair he's in creaks, timeworn and aged like his bones. Instead of his usually neutral expression, he's smiling so gently. "You're a tough one to live without."

 

"James mentions you a lot," he grumbles, half sounding one foot in, one foot out, he's likely the sort that'd walk away if needed, if a woman didn't need him.

"James is a dear," she agrees, lifting the hem of her skirt to step up onto the dock. The splash of the water against the wood makes it so easy to forget that the War is an ocean away. That lost souls are shipped back in droves and that they argue more often than not.

Last night, she was the slamming screen door while he hollered after her in Spanish -- then French so she could understand, so Barbossa sleeping in the next room couldn't, she's not a bleeding pacifist. It isn't peace that she wants, he accused, it's just an end to fighting like she honestly thinks there's nothing worth fighting for, nothing sacred or good enough to actually make her stand up, bear arms, say _anything: I want to live with you, not die for you_ , ("Carina."

"I've picked a side, haven't I? I'm here!"

"Because what other chance is there, right?" _I know what your father has done_ , he wanted to spit, yell in her face, break her with, but the crimes of the father -- the compensation that's the life of the child built by wars and devastation. He couldn't look in her eyes.

"I don't care if I ever see you again, Henry."

"Carina," he sighed, reaching for the locked screen door. He didn't move, so she didn't either, waiting like a siren call, fate slipping up. "I'm sorry," he apologized. It gets easier each time. "I'll call on you tomorrow?")

Life is always on the brink of death. But life is for the living, too, so in this chilled, frigid air, their breaths frozen and meeting. It makes time stop like there's a sort of magic, a hint of destiny, like this.. this -- she can't _breathe_. His eyes are asking, and he brings his hands up so slowly, his touch so gentle on her cheeks. It's like he could be holding her heart with how tender he is, " _Carina_."

"Henry," she whispers. Her mouth is so dry, and her stomach now -- she may as well be trembling under his hands, pulled out to the stretch of sea like he's this lifeboat grounding them both to shore. His name isn't quite a warning, but it's helpless, it's _something_ , it's the fact no man's ever held her so gently.

Looked at her with such intensity, had every part of her aching at his tenderness, the soft sweep of his thumbs over her cheekbones.

"Is this alright?" he asks her so lowly, intimate tenderness just collapsing this moment to something raw.

And she hasn't been oblivious to how he's never once looked at her like she was anything but perfect, even in the shade of a cloudy sunset, the bright light here on this beach. There's a hurricane somewhere off coast; it's no more than misting but occasionally the thunder booms and cracks -- they had a downpour for about forty seconds an hour ago that has everything smelling fresh and salty. And it's like he's saying it again with such vulnerable honesty, _I can swim,_ he means her in his life now, always.

"Yes," she says, a little too breathless. "This is alright," his thumb so gentle over her lips. He's looking at her like she's something he must love or might someday, if they have enough time. And if he'd just move a fraction of an inch, he could be touching her mouth, he could --

(Fuck, he thinks, she's picking his ribs clean, she's playing his heart like the organ it is.)

Lightning flashes, and he can't help but laugh when she steps back. His breathing is just as hard as hers, though, in the following lapses of quiet. It's not even the closest they've been.

 

Some Tuesdays, they dance.

The first time he'd showed up to call on her, yellow flowers in his hand and a brown plaid tie, he took a look at her polka dot dress and for once didn't say anything.

They'd glossed over the details of their families without telling the truth, then religion, apple pie after -- and as nervous as he was, tripping over his feet, stepping on her toes, he lacked the grace he usually had.

Now he's sure, suave, has her thinking to wonder where he finally learned to dance or if she just had that effect on him. He must've remembered his soon-to-be postgraduate at Oxford has to have been good for something; they talk philosophy. He asks her where she was when World War II officially began for the States, she tells him how she always wanted to teach.

The band plays something slow for the lovers on the floor after a lively tune has her breathless and heaving, his face red, and when she suggests they take a break, embarrassed and warm in the fondness he regards her with, he takes her hand. And she leans into him when he guides her closer to him so they can properly dance to the languid lilt of this love song.

His heart's erratic where her palm's pressed to it, crooked safely beneath his, and everything about this is lovely. Beyond lovely.

She could float or fly swaying here with him, shutting her eyes and trying to remember each bit of this and how it's filling her up and out from her soul. The quiet flickers of peace in a lifetime of both their running, he can be just a man here, unburdened by the past and the secrets he's keeping and the feeling of the future so heavy on his scarred shoulders. She can be just a pretty woman, intelligent and sure, and they could be together like time isn't fleeting. Like the seconds aren't ticking away _as time goes by_ , yes, people are asleep all over the world.

"Carina," he whispers. It's a hush against her forehead, smooth with his clean-shaven chin.

"Henry." She wraps her arm around his shoulder more tightly, dreading letting go already. Even of this memory.

"Would you write to me?" he asks her, hating already the parts of him he'll leave with her. How he'll be changed the next time he sees her again, gone from the innocence of America and her sweet red lipstick, her sunny smiles and soul-rendering frowns. "Jyn."

She doesn't think of Dawn's tears or that hopeless resignation. When she draws back just enough to see his face in the lights, she's thinking _yes_ and the hope that wrenches in her stomach like butterflies, like victory colors in the sky.

 

When he first kisses her, she's shouting at him and ranting and raving, one little thing after another, a hole in her panty hose, his recklessness, his want to follow after Churchill with the WRI and maybe undermine some Germans.

And that's not why she's mad, heaven's sake, she remembers the late thirties and Chamberlain's appeasement in Czechoslovakia, and the twisted, tired fighter in her wants to ask what if -- God forbid -- he's drafted, would he desert?

She's shouting until she isn't, when he crosses the room and takes her face in his hands so gently like that first time and kisses the indignation off her face.

And he kisses her.

And he kisses her, cupping her cheek, brushing his fingers tenderly through her hair, sealing his mouth into hers and coming alive, pressing her body so warm against his body.

She has to hold onto him halfway through it, so weak in the knees and gasping when he breaks the kiss. "How dare --" she starts quietly, but she pulls him back to her as he draws her in, and it's electric, it's the promise of something more.

Sunlight through lace, the wind in her hair, the sand between her toes. The first she's changed her mind and the last time she regretted it, she can feel the the heat in his cheeks against hers. He's touching her waist and holds her so close to him that they're breathing together now, they're moving together. He palms her hips, and she fists her hands into the lapels of his jacket, opens her mouth to him, and he _almost_ forgets himself.

She's sweeter than anything but he's fire; it was fear that had her angry, it's something soft in her heart that stalls when he sighs raggedly into her cheek. "Carina," he whispers so urgently.

"Yes," she inhales, needy, airless, _anything_ , oh, goodness.

"I meant to ask before I did that," he admits, kissing her left cheek, her right, her forehead before he tucks her under his chin, holds her so tightly. So closely that she resolves she won't ever let go now that she has him, not until the War is done.

 

"I made you a plate," Hector calls from the kitchen. When Carina pokes her head in, though, he snarks at her, uses that impassive know-it-all tone she pretends to hate. "He's leaving soon, isn't he?"

"I told you he was staying for dinner," she reminds him, fretting at her lip.

"Not a month and a half ago you didn't. When's he off to England? I bet he's a British spy."

"Hey, Carina," Henry calls from the living room, pretending to not have heard. "Come here."

She glowers warningly at her father before heading to Henry and the voice he uses when he gets lost in the market or the seaside shops, never mind his long legs could take him from the front door to the back door in six seconds. Not enough space to get lost, here, not unless -- oh.

"Yes?" Just, she already knows.

He smiles when he sees her, as bright as Christmas in '41 could have been, and because it's so subconscious now, effortless, their fingers slip together when she comes to his side. "Who's that?"

An old picture of Barbossa in his greens, standing tall and undefeated since this was early in the war, his arm slung haphazardly around Jack's steady, heavy shoulders, all the world ahead of them.

"Jack Sparrow," she smiles timidly. "And my father." She wonders what he'd think of this young man standing here barefoot, stroking her knuckles with his thumb, laying down his coat over puddles on the sidewalk for her. Carrying her through mud so she wouldn't muddy her dress. Lecturing her in defiance when she had the gall to say that enemies could be respectful, too, all people are people, they bleed.

She wonders if what he thinks of Henry even matters -- she loves him. So damn the rest of the world. He's seen this picture of Jack before.

 

"Roses?" Dawn sighs. "Lilies? I kinda like daisies. What do you think, James?"

"I don't think anything about flowers," he frowns, looking utterly lost in this florist's shop. "Something pink?"

Carina wants to suggest blue, blue like Henry's jacket, but Dawn's just gonna ask her if she's getting ideas for her own wedding, when she's marrying Henry, if she's pregnant -- and James is here. Goodness.

None of those things, thank you. Henry's gone.. gone somewhere, back to Maine, she thinks, and has missed James's arrival back here by a mere three days -- back from somewhere he won't give the location of, and all wars are the same war, _I renounce all claims to war_ , she's not sure what James is doing is legal. She doesn't think he's a spy, not exactly, but.

Oh, well. She might be, if she were a man.

Roosevelt's in Cairo with Churchill, and when they've decided on tulips -- unusual but lovely -- they huddle around a radio together, mugs of coffee, listening for news and daydreaming a little of the future, of ivory lace, James's lady's laughter, Henry's lazy, slow smiles at her. Anything to brighten the audible list of prisoners.

 

War starts to feel just like revenge.

 

 _I didn't know how to say good-bye_ , she reads. The letter shakes in her hands. _I keep trying not to write that I love you. When I told my mother about you, I embellished, and she laughed when I said you had hit me with your car._

The address on the letter is from London, England.

 

As much as Dawn advises her not to, there's nothing Carina wants more than to work somewhere she's access to all the news she wants, information flooding in as decisions are made and tactics are carried out instead of weeks and months later and devoid of the truth.

1943 came and went.

1944 is brought in with a dusting of snow that tastes like the sea, feels like the freedom that could be drawing in so soon. It's a few weeks after the new year that she receives her latest letter from Henry, one that apologizes for his messy scrawl, the words he might write.

He claims to have been drinking with a friend from Oggsford, one who he's known for the better part of a decade. He's a lecturer who's joining the war, who speaks with such nationality for his country that Henry himself is almost swayed to take arms up to defend the hope and the promise. But he's got one of his own to keep, just this semester to finish, conferences to attend.

He writes that if she'll have him, he's coming back to South Carolina in the spring. He says that he would have given anything to kiss her on New Year's Eve, and her cheeks turn pink as he merits the apology he'd scripted at the beginning of the letter.

He writes that he misses her kiss. He misses the softness of her lips and the heat of her mouth; he says he isn't a poet, but he revels in how her hands felt in his hair. How her neck felt under his lips, how her smooth skin tasted against his teeth. _I'm not a gentlemen_ , he writes and she rereads, sinking deeper into her sheets, spreading her thighs, _for I imagine more of your skin under my mouth._

 

Because she's awful to herself, she reads and reads and reads and finds the news of an Oxford professor whose life was taken by a bomb in 1941.

 

If negotiations are to determine the end of the Second World War by the middle of 1945, then the coming months are desperate and frightening and angry and James tells her about the black-out curtains when he comes back with his hands shaking. He tells her how starved those men looked.

With him, though, is his lady love, a bright-eyed girl that looks angry but happy to meet her. She's angry that she is ridiculed, that is stuck-up, a slut, a prude, unfeminine depending on the clothes she wears, the higher the heels, the red lipstick, the skirts or the pant suits. She looks tired of it already, this worth dependent on hosiery and self-presentation instead of preservation.

Carina loves her. And so does James's father, for she reminds him of a strong-willed and stubborn woman that he knew years back. So she can't help it when she tells James to tell her that he's in love with her (while he has a chance) because he actually tells her where he's going this time. Berlin.

He tells her of something called the SOE, too, but she doesn't know what that is. She asks instead about Austria and Switzerland, the camp where where the Corps were met, where James ran into his Cecilia and away from enemy fire.

With James by her side the next month, time feels so slow for once, like they're not going to run out of it. James, though, says something about Sparrow to Henry when a letter comes. Prison. Capture, fire, bullets -- she holds him when he takes a walk after that, saltwater against her cheek, his chest fragmenting into a thousand shards, just tear at the sky. Burn it like paper, like a pyre.

 

"My mother's proud you slapped me when I came back, by the way."

He's so casually accusatory that he outright laughs when she smacks at his arm. "You deserved it!" she huffs, believing it with a woman's wrath, a child's petty scorn. And he did deserve it, not saying good-bye to her, showing up at her and Hector's door four and a half months later with yellow flowers.

He said they should have been blue.

"Are you going to forgive me?" he asks her, honestly, walking her to the library to her precious books and a kiss that's gonna collapse the world a little. "It was selfish. I know. The first time we met, I didn't think about you often," he explains. "I presumed that if there was more time, if I wasn't -- if I didn't feel compelled --"

"Obligated," she interrupts darkly.

"-- to leave, I might have. I don't know," he sighs, rubbing his jaw. "I couldn't say good-bye to you," he means, twining their fingers together so tightly. "I don't want that to be your last memory of me."

"You are selfish," she huffs, glancing up, up, always up to his defined jawline, his dark, intense eyes. "And you're stupid, making these choices for me. You don't get to decide any of this alone."

"I know," he apologizes.

"If that's what our future is, I don't want it."

"Alright."

"I was.. I was devastated," she finally admits to him, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. Like its a joke, only her voice cracks in this edge of desperation. "When you left me. I was devastated, Henry."

"Carina," he whispers, taking her into his arms at once. "I'm sorry."

In heels today, brown and polished, she knows for a fact her lips can reach the side of his jaw if not his mouth fully for a kiss. It's what she'd done the night before he'd headed back home months ago and unknowingly to England -- kissing all she could reach: his chin, his jawline, the corner of his mouth. The skin revealed by his unbuttoned shirt, a spot just center-right above his heart, so full in her hands, quaking beneath her fingertips.

He'd asked her to wait then, for him, and time had started to measure in the days he'd been away instead of the months and years that couldn't be guaranteed anymore.

He takes her hand in his, looks so very much on the brink of something impending, words that can change her life.

"You know I --"

"Yes," she gasps, interrupting him because it isn't fear; it isn't apprehension, it's _too much_ filling up her lungs and spreading out from her heart. She loves him, too. She does. She just isn't built for hope or grandiose feelings. "I'll see you later," she guesses, tugging him down to her by the lapels of his coat, kissing him so quick it's a habit, it's air here on this sidewalk.

"I'll bring you flowers."

 

Margaret's baby girl, her bright gray eyes smile up at her and she laughs her infant giggle with such childlike hope and happiness.

"Oh, no," her friend teases quietly, eyeing Carina from the counter. "I know that look. You're gonna want a baby of your own."

"No," she coos, helplessly endeared because the baby giggles in her arms. "I couldn't," she whispers, but she's mystified, she's half in love -- she's stopped breathing when baby Viola reaches out with her tiny hand unafraid and curious to touch the sea shell around her neck.

 

Carina is. Bright, dizzying laughter and then scowls so scathing. Impeccable posture, awful jokes, a book always in her purse, a penchant for the color blue. She realized that she was powerful and confident and feminine and a wonder; she struck fear into the souls of the men who felt she was intimidating, she was made so much more by the events that have occurred in life that have changed them all.

She turned down a university.

She wonders which side of the city of Berlin James was in when It happened.

She applies her red lipstick and she feels like a heartbreaker, like something powerful, like it's her intellect that makes her shine under the club's lights with an essay in her hands.

She watches Henry keep looking back to her from where he's dancing with Dawn, smiling her way like he's gravitating towards her slowly, to her stool at the counter where Scrum sits beside her toasting their success with beer, drinking to his wedding.

 

"What are we celebrating?" she asks him with the quirk of a grin, her clogs dangling off her fingers, the sand not quite warm, not quite cool to her feet here on the beach.

"Do we need a reason?" he asks, glancing at her and rising up with a bottle of champagne in his hand.

His hair's a mess and his slacks are rolled up to his knees, and it's.. a lot of skin. He's grinning at her like it's been days instead of just this morning for coffee. "No," she decides, surprising herself. "There doesn't have to be a reason, does there?"

"Not anymore." His smile's so big, and as he steps towards her with his arms out, the familiarity so crushing, she absolutely can not.

"Except." She holds up her hand to stop him, watching confusion muddle his face. "Call me old-fashioned or conventional, but this is not how it's supposed to go," she reminds him, resolving to not even smile with her hair tucked behind her ear.

His eyes narrow and he bites his lip like he does when he thinks, like he's seeing her. But he always has. "What?"

And her shoulders sag at once, goodness, he wouldn't understand. "At some point, you're going to have to ask," she tells him, her frown spread up like the sky stretching on all the way to other side of the world.

"Ask what?" he wants to know, frowning.

" _The_ question," she emphasizes, gesturing really rather helplessly. "You know. Will you marry me," she reminds him tactfully.

He just stares, though, watches her considerately until she's worried he's dense and shrugs a bit, frets that maybe she misinterpreted all of this and he -- he laughs as she starts to whinge, get so aggravated with him that she starts off, set on going back to the car. "Carina," he calls gently, pulling her to him by her dress whipping in the wind. "Of course I'll marry you," he swears forever, feeling her sigh quietly into his neck. "I love you."

 

He makes her wait three minutes outside the apartment he shared with James before she can come inside.

She counts to four before she laughs, expecting him to be clearing dishes and picking up clothes and the like, but when she pushes open the door, he's in the middle of stacking papers as quick as he can. Judging by the meticulous state of the cleanliness of his apartment, the three minutes was just to stack the documents into chronological order or by date or topic or something -- this orderliness is something she hasn't known about him.

It makes her beam in this soft way as she watches him, eyebrows arched. "I'm guessing I can't see those," she says.

Because he knows her, he knew she wouldn't have waited outside, so he's not startled. Just apologetic. "Unfortunately not, love."

The endearment was so quick around the corners of his mouth. It has her heart spinning. "They have anything to do with the SOP?"

"The SOE," he scoffs, taking the last paper and adding it to the stack, setting it in a drawer. "Yes. They do."

"And you..?"

"Study them."

"For.. fun?" she asks, biting back her grin at the insulted, indulged look on his face.

"For patterns and -- you know what," he huffs, not annoyed at all, "you can read the old ones."

"How old?"

"Earliest I saw was 1938. Take that year."

She plops herself down on the settee neatly, taking whichever pages he gives her. "Do you have any long-winded speeches he'd written about why the United States shouldn't join -- have joined -- er. You know what I mean," she frowns, shifting to tuck her feet under herself.

"If you read them, you can't dare laugh."

"War isn't a comedy," she counters. Still, the things they don't know about the other.

When he seats himself next to her on the love seat, so close, _so close_ , their legs are touching. She's never actually been in here before. His apartment. "I can't read if you're going to be distracting," she reminds him idly.

"All I'm doing is sitting." His fingers spindle her wrist, though, so tender to the delicateness of her left hand. "We're going to get married, Carina," he sighs so solemn, bringing her palm up to his lips and kissing the creases, the paper cuts on her fingers.

 

She remembers one night he left a meeting late after they'd first started keeping each other's company. It'd been a chance meeting; he was walking with a man she didn't know, happened upon the street of the car that had nearly killed him and told the man to go on, that he'd catch up.

She'd been crying in the driver's seat. Barbossa had gotten so sick and pale and pallid, and in delirium, for only a minute, he hadn't known who she was.

Henry had coaxed her out of the car, wrapped her in his jacket, then wrapped her in his arms and held her, let her beat at his chest and crumble in his hold.

"It's okay," he had said, and nothing was, not a single inch of the world except maybe Switzerland and like, Montreal was doing good last he checked, but he promised it'd be alright anyways, didn't know why he bothered to her bleary eyes, her cracked syllables.

 _He had called for my mother_ , she'd sobbed into his chest minutes before she apologized, tried to right herself and pretend pain wasn't like one of the stars overhead, hurt so rampant it felt like _ice_ sealing her heart to loneliness.

And she'd raised her chin and squared her shoulders and resolved herself to quit acting so emotional, crying in the (quite frankly) strong arms of Henry and forgetting herself when there were other problems, millions of refugees and persecuted against her broken heart's singular one.

She sniffled, then, eyes red, her face blotchy with tears. He still held onto her arms gently, helping her to stand if she needed it. "Do you have a handkerchief?" she choked.

And he just raised his tie to dry her eyes, wipe at her nose while she squeezed her fists into the collar of his coat, didn't.. didn't want to let go, ever, not really, and so never quite would.

 

She buys as many war bonds as she can with her father's money when word from James finally arrives. He's in Holland, very much not dead, and it's with some sort of hesitance that sounds like an apology when Henry tells her he's joining him and the efforts there.

Time again feels like it's reduced to minutes instead of the years they should have; it's not a joke at all when he laughs and tells her he won't have her become a widow, that he wants for them to marry when the war's done and he never has to say good-bye to her again.

 _I will work to remove all causes for war_ , she pours herself into the Red Cross and the efforts to aid Holland in its time for famine. He really has made a rebel out of her every resolve, but before he leaves, oh, before then, she holds onto the last minutes in days she has with Henry, she doesn't leave his side, she feels their lifetime in full force permeating her soul and prolonging this.

It's when she's kissing him into the couch that the world starts to feel like a train that won't stop, like the Blitz imploding again, she's slowly unbuttoned his shirt and breathes with him, kissing. And kissing, his tongue spread slow over hers, oh, God.

"Okay," he says raggedly, his brown eyes dark looking up at her standing in front of him. He slides his hands up from her thighs to her hips, so close to the zipper of her dress, to something that burns and smolders, love so cautious. Her hands so unsure but her eyes so wanting.

He doesn't ask if she's scared. He just asks her if she's sure, and she is.

Her heart beating so quick, her body moving so slowly, she presses against him in drawn-out, slow, intoxicating agony, her heat so warm, her breathing silent.

She lowers her mouth to his neck, but instead of sucking the spot over his throat that makes him groan, has her coming to pieces, she whispers, "Come back to me," urgently, hopeful, with her fingers threaded gently through his hair.

It's so sweet when he kisses her. So languid and unrushed with his hands gently cupping her cheeks. His fingertips soft against her cheekbones. "I'm coming back to you," he swears, kissing the tear at the corner of her left eye. "Carina, I promise."

His voice just breaks her heart. "I'm not ready for you to leave," she mumbles, pressing her face into his neck.

"I know, love," he soothes, wrapping his arms tightly around her back. "Have I told you how glad I am we met?"

"Yes." It's a whisper, but it's always worse before it's better and D-Day hasn't been uttered yet. He'd feel it against his skin if she cried, so she doesn't, just breathes in his skin and how she's going to miss this when the last time was so painfully hard, one of the worst things she's ever had to face.

"I'm going to come back," he promises.

"You are."

"We're gonna have, like, eight kids," he honestly laughs, bright and raw. It just sounds like he's choking, but a heavy breath into her neck, he leans back. He looks the refined political idealist he does when he's dignity and reverence, a kiss so sound it's a wonder their lungs ever worked without each other, that they were able to survive this long without their lengthy conversations, the morning coffee, the comfort of feeling so close to home in each other.

"I want," she whispers, pressing her nails hard into the back of his neck. "I want to, Henry, want to --"

"Carina." Wordlessly, quiet save their breaths and the gasping lilt to her breath, he rests his forehead tenderly against hers. He can feel her burning, feel the faintest press of her hips into his, trying, unsure.

He asks just once more, this time by saying he loves her, caressing her lips with the words. When she whispers it back, watches his eyes with the wide, bright courage that's all hers, all nerve-ends and breaths starting to lengthen, he edges up the hem of her dress slowly.

He kisses her, then all she's saying is _oh_.

 

The letters are pages and pages at first. Long and thoughtful, detailed about everything he sees and hears. Posters and banners at rallies, the patriotism that seems to define the Allies.

His letters dwindle to nothing when she hears the bombs in England have started again as quickly as they'd stopped. Nothing but a collective breath to be taken in like a weary sigh by the universe, a reminder. All wars are the same war.

 

Months pass by with no word.

Dawn's gaze turns steadily pitiful, but no, if he hasn't the time to write, then he's plenty of work. He's busy aiding refugees, helping those without a fighting chance.

She throws herself into her work, too, but not before doing as he suggested, heading north to see his parents. Metal is stockpiled in Wisconsin, yes, but food isn't rationed, quilts aren't being prayed over. There's no pretty girl crying in a powder room because Tony (and Henry) might be dead, there's just Elizabeth's sure conviction, her insurmountable hope.

She just wonders after Hector and what must he be up to right now? Is he bothering to cook or does he eat out? Does he talk Scrum through the trials of marriage?

What she wouldn't give for his guidance right now, she thinks. He'd been her shoulder to lean on as well as her pillar of strength, a helping hand, and as kind as the Northerners are, they're only just overbearing. It might be since she's forlorn, but she can't blame Henry for running off and hitchhiking his way to James and a cause when so many here renounce the war with nothing but bitter condemnation like it's a passing inconvenience, not a measure to be prevented. His parents are the only exception and treat her kindly, but how Elizabeth has started to worry. And pray.

 

With more months of not hearing a single word through post, Hector decides she must be kept busy and is much better off, and Dawn drags her out the nights she can't get away with reading and rereading the letters he's sent from past London, past Oxford, from Rome.

Then she gets a telegram delivered to her at the library: _I'm alive; I love you_ with an _H_ and a _T_ and so much love she feels herself breathing again --even if France is more dangerous than Holland, at least she hasn't his words to read of smoke, of red in the sky, of the sound of the bombs and if he's enough coal and oil to survive the winter, if that WRI card is worth it, if why can't he just come home?

 

Spring bursts in with light and a renewed fervor she hadn't seen since Henry; colors so bright and lively it almost hurts with so much devastation rampant. Or that's just the hurt of being mistaken for a widow when the sweet old lady who enters the library constantly takes notice of the single diamond and how Carina's always walking to or from here without anyone's company but God's.

They get to know each other real well in the meantime.

She's so pleased to share her ideals with this elder woman that looks as if she could have been a flapper in her day, strapped shoes and short hemlines, a disregard for the bothersome trouble of long hair and the sultry euphemism of dark make-up and bright red lipstick when it had women sluts, whorish, fast, wild: all depending on what they'd wear instead of what they thought.

She recognizes a kindred spirit in this woman, she thinks, she's always been prone to empathy at the grave injustice of life and the humanity in some that ought to be protected above all else. Or no, she hasn't, but she's never claimed to not be a hypocrite.

 

May 5, 1945, and they say the war is ending.

 

The letter addressed from James arrives two days before the letter from Henry. Bless him, it's old news now, but reading the hope and the promise of James's voice carried in his penmanship, it's experiencing the flying colors, the liberation of Paris before it happened, when he and Henry were fighting for it, when so much was a stepping stone to these many, many victories now.

She starts and stops her replies twenty times, wanting to tell how the entirety of the U.S. must know a victory was coming. It might've been decided the instant the first bomb dropped into Pearl Harbor and hastened a war more justice than revenge, the treatises in Cairo, Quebec, the freedom of Sicily, the islands that made up as much the war as the continents.

Maybe it was when China executed their Communist leader, when in a letter addressed to James from Henry in 1939, he expressed his disgust at a group of his peers labeling themselves fascists. These determined the outcry of these dictators' influences, when the world realized these weren't Utopias but infernos, comets and bombs and waving flags, lifeboats across the Atlantic and pilots racing to liberty.

And it's like the world decided all at once that the good was going to win.

 

She's walking out of the library with a tote slung over one shoulder, books in her hands, paper tucked away if she changes her mind when she supposes he could arrive here quicker than a letter could get to Paris if he's still there.

The streets are coming alive now that shifts are ending, dates are beginning in the small city nightlife, people are celebrating the victory around the world: red, white, and blue staining everything here, bleeding in the streets and decorating the sky. Banners wave to say that they won, _we won_ , it had been such a long, long time.

The truths of the camps are out, genocides are finished, and the war of justice became revenge in Japan, but the world can begin to breathe again now.

With blue flowers in his hand, that worn bag slung around his back, he's standing in the middle of the sidewalk while others walk around him obliviously, ignorant to all he's witnessed and what he's fought for with more vehemence than the symbol of the broken rifle.

He's in a uniform she doesn't recognize, something of the sort James was wearing when she'd met him on the beach years ago, and he terribly needs to shave, really. His hair's a right mess, too, but she knows the lines of his face and that quirk of his mouth, the relief and the joy that cuts into his smile as he spreads his arms and she drops her things, racing to the most beautiful sight she's ever seen, freedom, eternity, _love_ , oh, the thought she keeps thinking, the fact that he promised, after all, and steps down the street, there's Jack Sparrow looking swarthy and smug and triumphant and _alive_.

Carina and Henry embrace like a lifeline, like it's the rest of their lifetimes with her hands grappling into his coat and his arms holding her up. _Oh, my God_ he keeps saying with her name, stroking her hair, petting her back, squeezing her to him so tight. "I told you," he swears, saying it again and again, choking her name in cries for once so happy.

"I know," she laughs, inhaling brokenly through a sob. She'll say it again forever: him, always him, every next day from now all over again, "Henry, _Henry_ , I love you; _you came back_." She's bursting at the seams, crying into his neck. Arms and legs wrapped around him, it's entire minutes of holding each other like they're all that's left, her voice so heaven sent to his racing pulse, " _Henry_."

It's August of 1945, and the world's been shaken up, it's blown lives to pieces, it's stopped as much it's started again. Giddy with victory, drunken on hope, people on the street stop to applaud when they kiss, resign to never again let go.


End file.
